Greetings From an American Songwriter, Lost in London

Joseph King
American songwriter and frontman for the Brooklyn-based band Deadbeat Darling

My name is Joseph King and I'm the frontman and songwriter for the New York City-based band Deadbeat Darling. We are what you might call the epitome of a New York indie rock band - swagger, grit, with a touch of sophistication and a taste for the extremes. Brooklyn kids who drink in Brooklyn dive bars mostly, but can be caught in West-side members clubs on occasion, drinking with fashionistas and taste-makers.

We rehearse in a space that's been home to dirty rock bands since 1983, and occupies the basement of Max Fish, the oldest operating dive bar on the Lower East Side. It also hosts our after-show soirees until dawn on occasion. We're one of the stronger drawing indie bands in New York with a scene of our own, but in the grand menagerie of Brooklyn artists, happily just faces in the crowd.

In October of 2010 we made our first trip to London for a 10 day run of shows, and in March of 2011, signed a record deal which made us the flagship band of UK-based indie label Spearhavoc Records. We ventured to the sprawling sheep-laden hills of South Wales to record our album at Monnow Valley Studio with Grammy-award winning producer Ken Nelson (Coldplay, Gomez), and spent six whisky-soaked weeks sequestered in that lovely part of the world. Since then we've made two more trips out to the UK for shows, video-shoots and the like, and with our album due out on 2 April, are scheduled to return again in May for an even more extensive run.

Consider that a brief introduction as to who, what and where we are; in essence, an American rock band throwing our hats into the UK music scene. The experience up to now has been ecstatically exciting, but not void of some eye-opening lessons. The most painful? In order to taste a cocktail in a typical British bar you have to order a double. If you want it to taste like a drink you'd get in Brooklyn, make that a triple. The Tube stops running at midnight, and taxis are a fast road to homelessness.

Essex accents are every bit as entertaining to the American ear as we ever imagined, and a Welsh accent in a drunken early morning hour takes an act of God to understand. Best to pretend - he's probably just offering you a friendly drink anyway. Happy days. But in all seriousness, we've received nothing short of the warmest of receptions, and are curious to see how things play out this summer. We promise to be as gentlemanly as our obtuse American upbringings will let us, just make sure the whisky is at least a double...